Information School News

Yingshen Huang, a visiting scholar from the University of Peking, along with Andrew Cox and Laura Sbaffi, presented their paper 'Research Data Management Policy and Practice in China' at the the 15th International Digital Curation Conference on the 17th February. The event, run in Dublin by the Digital Curation Centre in partnership with Digital Repository of Ireland, brought together the various stakeholders that play a role in ensuring digital objects are appropriately created, managed, preserved and shared. The conference - which consisted of workshops, a two day-long main conference and an unconference focussed on community - was held at Croke Park. Keynote Lecture 'Collecting and Curating the National Memory' by Dr Sandra Collins, Deputy Director of the National Library of Ireland. Keynote lecture 'The Internet of Things: Utopia or Dystopia?' by Francine Berman, Edward P Hamilton Distinguished Professor in Computer Science at Rensselaer...

This week Professor Stephen Pinfield is visiting Sun Yat-Sen University in China. Whilst there, Stephen will be giving three lectures on recent research projects in which he has been involved and also discussing research collaboration opportunities. Stephen is hosted by old colleagues Miguel Nunes and Alex Peng, who are both Professors there; Miguel is Dean of the Information School. The three lectures that Stephen is giving on his visit are as follows: Open-Access Mega-Journals and the Future of Scholarly Communication (research conducted with Claire Creaser, Jenny Fry, Valérie Spezi, Simon Wakeling & Peter Willett): Open-access mega-journals (OAMJs) represent an increasingly important part of the scholarly communication landscape. OAMJs, such as PLOS ONE and Nature’s Scientific Reports, are large scale, broad-scope journals that operate an open-access business model, and which employ a novel form of peer review, focusing on scientific ‘soundness’ only and not judgments o...

It is always exciting to see a former PhD student again and find out more about what they are doing now, so it was amazing to be able to visit Mexico City and say hello again to Gibrán Rivera Gonzalez who gained his PhD at the Information School in 2013. He is now a lecturer at Instituto Politécnico Nacional, one of the top universities in Mexico. The picture below is of a seminar I gave on the need for qualitative research in the age of big data and AI. Together we also went to the Entre Pares conference, in Pueblo, organised by CONRICYT (The National Consortium of Scientific and Technological Information Resources). The conference aims to promote scholarly communication in academic communities across Mexico. This year’s event had an impressive programme of presentations on a wide variety of information science topics. There was a track on Research Data Management, reflecting the increasing interest in this topic in the country. It was good to be able to share some UK experi...

Andrew Cox and a colleague at Sheffield Hallam have just had a book published by Facet publishing. This book is for librarians and other support professionals who are interested in learning more about RDM and developing Research Data Services in their own institution. It will also be of value to students on librarianship, archives, and information management courses studying topics such as RDM, digital curation, data literacies and open science. Find out more and buy the book here.

Congratulations to Dr Andrew Cox who has secured funding for the following project. Wicked Ways with Research Data Management The Leadership Foundation for Higher Education has funded this small project to create a community of practice around the exploration of Research Data Management (RDM) as a "wicked problem", i.e. the kind of complex issue that is interpreted differently by different actors. Many issues in UK universities have all the hallmarks of being “wicked problems”: complex, hard to solve issues that stakeholders perceive in very different ways.   A new wicked problem for universities that has emerged in the last few years is what to do about RDM. The aim of the  ‘ Wicked Ways’ project is to bring together a network of those involved in tackling the wicked RDM problem in different institutions and through an iterative, reflective and participative process construct an open educational resource about leadership in wicked problem contexts. ...

Over 200 information professionals registered for today's webinar entitled "What is Research Data Management and what is the Library's Role in Supporting it?" by Andrew Cox hosted in the UKSG webinar series. Free access to the slides and a recording of the webinar is now available from UKSG website.

RDMRose 's Eddy Verbaan participated in the DigiCurv conference " Framing the digital curation curriculum " in Florence 6-7 May. The project poster explained the project and invited conference attendees to identify directions for the library curriculum on Research Data Management.

What is Research Data Management and why has it become a key agenda in HEIs? How do researchers themselves view data - what is research data? Which arguments for RDM do researchers find most convincing? What is the role of the library and other professional services in supporting RDM? How to support Research Data Management (RDM) has become a big issue in academic libraries. Many professionals will want to get up to speed on the topic. JISC has funded the Sheffield iSchool with the university libraries of Leeds, Sheffield and York to create a set of learning materials on RDM. Version 1 is now available. http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/is/ research/projects/rdmrose This Open Educational Resource of learning materials can be used for self-supported CPD or reused under an attribution/sharealike licence for staff training within libraries or by other LIS educators. The project team would welcome your feedback and comments!